If the president of the United States can use a Sharpie to cover up his shortcomings, why can’t a team of firefighters do the same?
That was the logic behind a calendar announced by the fire department in Kaysville, Utah, on Sunday, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to President Donald Trump‘s doctored hurricane map presentation last week.
The firefighters were riffing off a map of hurricane Dorian‘s predicted path that Trump presented in the Oval Office, which appeared to have been artificially extended over Alabama using a Sharpie last week. Trump spent more than a week defending an incorrect tweet about Dorian’s predicted path, and he presented the altered map as part of his campaign to prove himself right.
The hurricane did not hit Alabama.
“We were recently asked if we would be putting out a firefighter calendar. Naturally, we couldn’t do it, ’cause #DadBod,” the Kaysville Fire Department wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday. “But then the POTUS showed us that anything is possible when you use a Sharpie.”
The Kaysville Fire Department posted several “preview” photos on Facebook, in which the firefighters are shown with bigger muscles and abs crudely drawn onto their frames. They appear to be joking about actually putting out a calendar.
The photos echo an image shared to mock Trump last week, in which he was shown on the golf course with giant muscles drawn onto his amorphous body.
https://twitter.com/LeoKapakosNY/status/1169551733506412545
The original Facebook post generated thousands of reactions, and not all of them were positive.
In a follow-up post, the fire department urged Facebook users not to attack each other in the comments section of the calendar post.
“Just a friendly reminder to our followers, this is not a political page nor was this intended to be political,” the fire department wrote.
An unnamed fire official said the calendar was meant to “poke fun at a singular event,” and that the photos were simply meant to “feature some of the faces of our firefighters.”
Trump tweeted that Alabama was in the path of the hurricane on Sept. 1, prompting a swift denial from the National Weather Service, which sought to calm potential fears in the state. But Trump did not acknowledge his mistake. Instead he attacked journalists, shared outdated maps and claimed in multiple interviews that he was right all along.
WATCH: Trump shows off seemingly doctored map of Dorian’s path
He showed off the doctored map last Wednesday, and on Friday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) came out to disavow the National Weather Service’s initial Twitter rebuke of Trump. The denial was not signed.
The New York Times reports that NOAA issued the denial after Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, threatened to fire top employees if they did not back the president’s version of reality.
Despite the political firestorm, the facts remain clear: the hurricane did not hit Alabama. It swept to the northeast and set its sights on the Canadian Maritimes.
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